The top-20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and OSD-optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales rankings for first-quarter 2014 included nine suppliers headquartered in the US, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, two in South Korea, two in Japan, and one in Singapore, a relatively broad representation of geographic regions, according to IC Insights.
The top-20 ranking included three pure-play foundries (TSMC, Globalfoundries, and UMC) and six fabless companies. The top-four semiconductor suppliers all have different business models. Intel is essentially a pure-play IDM, Samsung a vertically integrated IC supplier, TSMC a pure-play foundry, and Qualcomm a fabless company.
It should be noted that not all foundry sales should be excluded when attempting to create market share data. For example, although Samsung had a large amount of foundry sales in the first quarter, most of its sales were to Apple. Apple does not re-sell these devices, so counting these foundry sales as Samsung semiconductor sales does not introduce double counting.
Outside of the top-five spots, there were numerous changes within the first-quarter top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking. MediaTek jumped up four positions as compared to first-quarter 2013 into 12th place. MediaTek continued to experience extremely strong demand for its devices in the booming low-end smartphone business in China and other Asia-Pacific locations. Moreover, MediaTek and MStar finalized their merger on February 1, 2014. Annual post-merger sales for MediaTek are expected to be well over US$6 billion, said IC Insights.
After Avago's purchase of LSI on May 6, 2014, the combined annual semiconductor sales run-rate of the two companies is likely to be over US$5 billion. Also, 2013's Micron/Elpida merger essentially created a new "giant" semiconductor company with Micron's sales expected to be over US$17 billion in 2014.
It should be noted that the sales of Micron and Elpida (merged on July 1, 2013), MediaTek and MStar, and Avago and LSI use the combined sales of the two companies for both first-quarter 2013 and first-quarter 2014, regardless of when the merger actually occurred. This was done in an attempt to make the company's sales growth rates more directly comparable and give a clearer picture of the merged company's sizes going forward.
Another potential merger to keep a watch for in the future is Fujitsu and Panasonic. In February of 2014, the two Japan-based companies signed a memorandum of understanding to combine the two companies' system LSI businesses and form a new fabless semiconductor company. IC Insights estimates that combined first-quarter 2014 semiconductor sales of these two companies was about US$1.25 billion (down from US$1.44 billion in first-quarter 2013), which would have ranked the "merged" company as the 16th largest semiconductor company in the first quarter of 2014. In total, the top-20 semiconductor companies' sales increased by 9% in first-quarter 2014 as compared to first-quarter 2013.
The success of the fabless and fab-lite business models and the continued strong growth of the memory market are evident when examining the top-20 semiconductor suppliers that logged double-digit growth in first-quarter 2014. IC Insights also said 10 of the top-11 first-quarter 2014 performers were either memory suppliers (SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung) or fabless/fab-lite companies (MediaTek, AMD, Infineon, Freescale, Avago/LSI, NXP, and Nvidia). | 